Ipswich Town 0 Liverpool 2

September 6, 2026September 7, 2026 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Nothing says “Colchester United” to me more than a football match on a Friday evening. Back in the days when I still liked nearly everything about football it was possible to watch Ipswich Town on a Saturday and as a sort of aperitif or starter for the football weekend, travel down to Layer Road on a Friday evening, park the car for nothing at the Gujarat Barracks, watch the likes of Mick Packer, Steve Dowman and Trevor Lee strut their stuff (this was the age of ‘disco’), stop for a pint and a packet of crisps on the way home and still easily have change from a tenner. Tonight however, for the price, in 1980 of a second-hand Austin Allegro, I shall be watching Ipswich play Liverpool with no thought of Colchester United at all.

It’s been a cloudy day, but quite a warm and breezy one and I’ve been indoors completing the first of the final ten working days before I retire. I meet Gary on the train to Ipswich, and we talk of how many days are left until I retire, the recently released film about Charles de Gaulle and how we agree that subtitled films and tv are better than dubbed films and tv. Travelling through Wherstead we are both as excited as the other to spot a polar bear, a part of the match day experience no other Premier League football club can offer.

It’s almost five-thirty when we reach our destination and Ipswich is busy with people and traffic like the busy place it still occasionally is. I ask Gary which way he wants to walk up to the Arb today and he chooses the Portman Road, Great Gipping Street, Civic Drive, Spiral car park, Lady Lane, St George’s Street route, although he claims not to be bothered either way. Personally, I think I prefer the Museum Street route, although I am a big fan of the Spiral car park, Civic Drive and the old Crown Court building which remind me of the optimism of the 1960’s. I see that the Crown Court building has been sold; I’d like to see it re-open as Ipswich’s museum of modern art and hope it isn’t demolished.

I am first through the door at the Arb and order a pint of Estrella Galicia for Gary and one of something brewed by Lacons for myself. Gary finds a table in the beer garden whilst I pay for the beer (£10 something with Camra discount I expect) and I then join him. Gary tells me that as long as Ipswich win by six clear goals tonight they will be top of the league. We agree that 9-3 is unlikely so pin our hopes on an 8-2 win. It’s not long before Mick arrives but he soon heads inside to order some food and returns with a pint of a golden ale by Mauldon’s, which he says isn’t very pleasant and I admit that my beer is pretty ropey too. We had both been looking forward to drinking Mauldon’s Suffolk Pride. Our conversation takes in the sale of Mick’s dead neighbour’s house, Mick’s holiday in Scotland and an amusing story at a camp site where, when Mick’s companion asked if they could have a pitch with a view the site owner said “So you want a fucking view do you? Everyone comes here wanting a fucking view” and when told that his site got good reviews on-line he said “I couldn’t give fuck about on-line reviews, you can stuff fucking Google up your arse”. It’s a great story, the sort to make a holiday truly memorable.

It’s gone seven-thirty by the time we leave for Portman Road after two further pints of Estrella for Gary, another disappointing pint of something by Lacon’s and a better pint of Lacons Encore for me, and cheesy chips and another disappointing Lacon’s pint and a double whisky for Mick. There are queues in Portman Road for the Cobbold Stand but the queues for the Sir Alf Ramsey Stand are much shorter than they were for the Sunderland match and I’m soon checked for scrap metals, weapons and explosive by a friendly man with big hair before accessing the illustrious turnstile 62. I arrive at my seat amidst a fog of thick smoke and a storm of great balls of fire like a scene from Dante’s Inferno.

Fiona, the man from Stowmarket (Paul), ever-present Phil who never misses a game, and his son Elwood are of course here already but Pat from Clacton has been feeling a bit under the weather and stayed home to watch the match on the telly. In her place are her niece, in the seat in front of Pat’s and her niece’s husband in Pat’s seat. In front of us, Bluey and Crazee and the excitable young stadium announcer, who tonight has two sidekicks both in freshly pressed suits. They look like they’re going to a wedding but it reminds me of the old joke “What do you call a Scouser in a suit?”, “The accused”. I try and join in with the excitable young stadium announcer’s announcing of the Town team but this evening he has become over excited and fails hopelessly to co-ordinate his reading out of the player’s surnames with their appearance on the scoreboard. My attempts therefore to sound like a Frenchman at the Allianz Rivier in Nice or the Stade Oceane in Le Havre are woeful.

When the game begins, it is Liverpool who get first go with the ball, which they send in the general direction of the goal closest to the former Unemployment Benefit office on Handford Road. Reassuringly, Liverpool are not wearing an unnecessary away kit tonight but are decked out in their traditional all red, albeit a version flecked with white marks as if it had been hung out to dry on a washing line where there were a lot of pigeons. As ever, Ipswich are in their signature blue shirts and white shorts with not even a hint of guano. The game begins at a fast pace and Liverpool win a corner within the first minute. The lead in my pencil breaks and I reflect on changing times and the absence of any Scots and Irishmen from the Liverpool team. I remark to Fiona that if his football career goes awry, the Liverpool goalkeeper looks as if he could always get a part in “Jesus Christ Superstar”, as long as no one mistakes him for Russell Brand.

In the sixth minute Liverpool score, Isak rattling the ball high in the net a nano second after it leaves his foot. “Allez, Allez” something, chant the Liverpudlians in the Cobbold Stand noisily. Three minutes later Isak scores again and my ears work out that the chant is “Isak, Allez, Allez”, which seems a bit odd given that he is a Swede not a Frenchman, but also probably confirms that Liverpudlians don’t know any Swedish or seemingly how to use Google translate, which would tell them to sing “Isak Kor!”.

It feels like the game may already be lost, but soon Fatawu is shooting over the Liverpool goal for the Town. I remark to Fiona that nearly all the Liverpool players appear to be much larger than the Ipswich players and like Under 12’s versus Under 8’s it’s not really fair and suggests the ‘big clubs’ dominate by buying their players by the foot. In the prevailing spirit of unfairness, one of the linesmen awards Liverpool a corner, which the Sir Bobby Robson standers agree should have been a goal kick. “Lino, Lino you’re a punt” they chant, curiously pronouncing the ‘p’ in hunt as a ‘c’. When the corner comes to nothing and the same linesman awards Town a throw, the chant becomes “You’re still a fucking wanker”. Just one more step up in this progression and the linesman would qualify to referee international matches.

We’re just over half-way through the first half and Town win a corner providing the opportunity to bellow “Come On you Blues” and have people turn around and look at me to see what someone who verbally supports their team looks like and whether perhaps I am a wearing a half and half scarf. As usual, the corner comes to nothing, but unusually Russell Brand unexpectedly and unintentionally catches the ball between his knees when it bounces up off the ground. Under recently re-written rules this would probably have rendered all Town players offside if the ball had somehow ended up in the net.

Another two minutes fade away. Julio Enciso bears down on goal, but his cross is hacked away from inside the six-yard box and then Leif Davis arrives beyond the far post only to head another cross over the bar. Liverpool are then denied a goal because it was offside, but the half comes to an end after two more Town corners and more chants of ‘Come On You Blues’, with other people actually joining in on the second occasion as if singing and chanting at a football match was normal.

Half-time is a time to reflect and I conclude that Town are losing, and despite having played pretty well after the first ten minutes they probably won’t win, or even draw, but I will stay, just in case, and because I’ve never left early yet. The football resumes at two minutes past nine. Liverpool have an early corner. Town’s Fatawu shoots wide; I can’t see by how much but it’s a shot that looks good enough to draw ‘oooohs’ from the crowd. After just twelve minutes, a third Liverpool player is booked, perhaps it’s because they’re so much bigger than us, perhaps it’s because they’re ‘dirty northern bastards’ but of course all of them are from south of the Penzance or east of Lowestoft.

Substitutions are made. Bradley Barcola makes his debut for Liverpool. He is a player who alone cost an insane £129,000,000, an insane 70% of the insane total Ipswich have spent on our entire team. Jack Clarke replaces Daizen Maeda, and Emersonn is replaced by Town’s new £20,000,000 signing Zian Flemming. Fiona admits to knowing the names of more of the Liverpool players at the start of this season than our own team. I tell her I’ve only heard of Virgil, and that’s just because I remember him in Thunderbirds.

With twenty minutes of tonight’s ‘match experience’ remaining, we are treated to Portman Road’s first brush of the season with the drama that is VAR as some bloke in red falls over in the Town penalty area when tackled; eventually the referee, Mr Darren England awards Town a free kick for an earlier offside. Mr England announces his decision over the public address system and to my ears sounds like he has a slight Scouse accent.

The remains of the game are in Town’s favour with a few shots deflected wide and another corner predictably coming to nothing. I have reluctantly given up on Town scoring the eight goals required to go top of the league tonight, but still draw hope from the fact that only last week Paris St Germain drew 2-2 in Lille after being 2-0 down as the game entered time added on. Tonight’s attendance is announced as being 30,019. It is only the second time since the 1980’s that more than 30,000 people have been to Portman Road. The last time was in 2024, also against Liverpool, and along with the atypical number of east Asian people in half and half scarves I will later see on the train home, I consider that this supports my theory that Liverpool have even more non-local supporters (sometimes known as ‘plastic’ supporters) than Manchester United.

Eventually, Mr England adds five minutes of additional time in which with a low shot Jack Clarke elicits a slow looking, diving save from the Russell Brand lookalike in the Liverpool goal. Along with many others I hang on to applaud the Town team after the final whistle, because leaving aside the opening nine minutes, which were a long time ago now, they’ve done alright. I also check to see if Bradley Barcola is as skinny as he looks on the telly. He’s not, but he does look sort of stretched in the middle, a bit like an insect does between its thorax and abdomen. I bet they won’t mention that on the telly, or Colchester United.

Ipswich Town 1 Havre AC 0

August 7, 2026 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

According to the Chargemap app on my mobile phone, the 495 kilometre trip from my house to Stade Oceane in Le Havre, home of Ligue 1 football team Havre AC, would currently take seven hours and twenty-five minutes including two stops totalling fifty minutes to re-charge my planet saving Citroen e-C4. This is a trip I made only last month and is one I would recommend, provided you have the cash to pay for the motorway tolls and the fare for le shuttle. Le Havre is a fascinating port city and on account of its being re-built in concrete by Auguste Perret after the RAF flattened it, it is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Disappointingly however, Havre AC were not at home when I visited last month, so I made do with a trip to the Museum of Modern Art to see Ai Wei Wei’s Lego interpretation of Monet’s Water Lillies, several beers in the excellent bars of le brasserie L’Havrais biere, and wandering amongst some of my favourite buildings. But the world and time are nothing if not round and a month later Havre AC have come to see me, playing a friendly versus Ipswich Town at Portman Road.

Unusually, my wife Paulene is coming to the match tonight, attracted by the promise of French footballers, although having grown up in Portsmouth she was, and as far as I know still is, always wary of French sailors. Our journey this evening is by planet saving Citroen e-C4 and we pick-up Gary on the way before parking very conveniently just around the corner from the Arb’. Gary is sporting the very latest replica Ipswich Town away shirt this evening, and gets the drinks in first; a pint of Estrella for him, a small glass of dry rose for Paulene and a pint of Nethergate Stour Valley for me. A woman in the bar compliments Paulene on her earrings before we retire to the garden and a table in the shade to talk of relatives and friends and other stuff, and Gary is impressed by my Havre AC T-shirt. In due course, I buy another round of drinks the same as before, but I opt for a pint of the weaker Nethergate Voyager this time and am disappointed that it tastes a little like the pipes have been cleaned but not rinsed very well afterwards, as in fact did the Stour Valley.

It’s about twenty past seven when we head for Portman Road and thankfully an easy downhill walk, because once again it is a very, very warm evening. There are long queues for the Cobbold stand in Portman Road, but what I notice first is that there are no programmes on sale again, which vexes me greatly; even in the days of Marcus Evans there were always programmes for pre-season friendlies, weren’t there? But my spirits lift slightly when I find there are no queues for the Sir Alf Ramsey stand and this gives me time to photograph Paulene with Town mascots Bluey and Crazee who are hanging around in the car park with a small man in spectacles. I tell Bluey and Crazee that Paulene has been photographed with an army of mascots, including Bouba the elephant in Monaco, Ri-Ri the Canary in Nantes, Auguste the lion in Reims, Merlux the Hake in Lorient, Erminig the ermine in Rennes, a very dodgy, moth-eaten looking Leopard in Rouen, but sadly not Sali the salamander in Le Havre. Bluey and Crazee unfortunately do not reply, and I commiserate with them that they do not speak.

Having been checked for scrap metal and explosives, I am ushered by a lady steward towards turnstile 61, but I tell her that I have to use turnstile 62, although I don’t know really know why and tonight’s match is only a pre-season friendly. “You never know” she says, and I think to myself “You never know what?” but like Bluey and Crazee I can’t say it. After venting excess spent Stour Valley and Voyager I meet up again with Paulene and Gary at our seats, which until we sit on them are an oasis of blue plastic amongst a sea of parents and children, many in last season’s replica kits. None of them are at all familiar and I look in vain for Pat from Clacton, Fiona, ever-present Phil who never misses a game, his son Elwood and the man from Stowmarket (Paul). I feel rather uncomfortable, like a walrus stranded amongst roosting penguins on a stoney beach somewhere in the South Atlantic. They seem to be giving off a lot of heat too because it is incredibly warm.

Eventually, the football begins with Town in their natural blue and white getting first go with the ball and kicking it towards the goal just off to our right. Havre are most disappointingly in all black rather than their signature pale blue and dark blue halved shirts and dark blue shorts, although a look on their website suggests they have no away kit, at least, perhaps not one they think anyone would want to purchase a replica of. Havre don’t know it, but they are of course kicking towards Cumberland Towers, a concrete building which is unlikely to earn Ipswich UNESCO World Heritage site status, but which I like because it looks a bit like a very big match box stood on its end.

In terms of football, the first half is awful, but this is at least consistent with most pre-season games. We amuse ourselves by working out which players are which on both sides. Gary asks who Mendel is and is more amused than he should be when I tell him that he is Mendelssohn’s father. This is probably the highlight of the half but only if I ignore the fact that Town’s new Japanese signing Daizen Maeda looks about sixty-five and nearly ready for his pension, but this is solely due to the strange silvery colour of his hair. Otherwise, all I recall are the numerous seagulls swooping overhead (have Le Havre brought their own?) and that Havre have a player whose surname is Pembele, which because it rhymes Dembele sets me off thinking about an imaginary team whose names all sound a bit like those of other, far superior players, like Zinedine Sedan, Bobby Carlton or Lionel Nessi.

The welcome relief of half-time is spent talking to Harrison, who Gary has never met before, although Paulene has. Harrison’s grandfather Ray is watching the match from his Heath Road hospital bed, from where he at least might have access to drugs. I will visit Ray a day or two later and he will tell me that he missed the first fifteen minutes because Town TV is not very good. I reassure him that in fact he missed absolutely nothing at all.

The match resumes at nine minutes to nine, predictably with a new Ipswich team. As happened in last week’s pre-season game versus Osasuna the more or less wholesale substitution of the team seems to do the trick and thirteen minutes later a Town goal is being celebrated as Chuba Akpom directs a free header into the Havre net after some startlingly bad defending from the Norman team and Town lead one-nil. On the touchline, the seldom smiling Havre manager Didier Digard, who incidentally played three games on loan for last week’s opponents Osasuna about ten years ago, is grim faced, looking as if he’s already deciding who to hit first when they all get back in the dressing room in half an hour’s time. Havre soon begun substitutions of their own, bringing on the players with the evening’s two most pleasurable surnames, Yanis Zouaoui and Hakim Dongopandji.

Twenty minutes of the second half have upped and left, and Jack Clarke has an early tilt at the worst shot of the season award as he shoots spectacularly wide and high. A minute later George Hirst is brought on to see if he can do better. Twelve minutes later, Havre produce what might be their only shot of the game, from substitute wide player Enzo Koffi, and the waning of interest in the stands begins to manifest itself with depressing calls of “Blue Army” from both adult males and small children. It’s something that doesn’t happen during ‘proper’ games and is another compelling argument for not attending pre-season friendlies.

The match nears its uninteresting conclusion and over the public address system we are told that collectively we number 6,669. It’s probably close to a capacity crowd for the limited areas of the stadium that are open, but I remain disappointed that I have not seen or heard a single French person in the crowd this evening, or smelled a Gauloise or even a faint whiff of garlic. I hope that we get to see RC Lens, Paris St Germain or Olympique Marseille at Portman Road before too long.

Ipswich Town 3 Bristol Rovers 0

September 7, 2020 / martinpbrooks / 2 Comments

It’s the first Saturday in September and the weather has broken, although to be truthful it’s been looking a bit cracked for a while now. Autumn approaches. It rained overnight and whilst there are glimpses of sunshine it is straining to penetrate through the clouds and worst of all it feels cold. But on the bright side, today sees the start of the football season and mighty Ipswich Town, the vessel in which the hopes and dreams of a good many of the people of Suffolk are invested will be playing Bristol Rovers in what I refer to as the League Cup, but the football club, media and those who don’t know any better call the Carabao Cup. I didn’t used to know what Carabao was, I erroneously thought it was a wrongly spelt American name for a reindeer, but because of the League Cup, and thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that it is a domestic water buffalo from the Philippines and also a drink; not a proper drink mind, like Adnams Broadside, tea, Noilly Prat, milk, red wine, Fuller’s 1845, espresso coffee, Crémant, pineapple juice, Champagne, lime cordial, Belgian Trappist beer , hot chocolate or malt whisky but something called an ‘energy drink’. The sponsorship of football competitions is a curious thing and only adds to the feelings I have that I live as an outsider on the fringes of society, with the Milk Marketing Board being the only sponsor whose product I can honestly admit to ever having set out to purchase.

Kick-off is at three o’clock, but of course due to the Covid-19 pandemic it is not safe for a large crowd to gather and therefore no one is going to Portman Road today. Sadly, I shall be denied the joys of travelling on the trains of Greater Anglia, the pre-match pints, the quickening anticipation-filled walk down Portman Road and the click of the turnstile. Today I will not hear the moans of the home supporters nor the witless abuse of the away supporters; I will not receive the suspicious glances of luminous stewards nor feel the soft artificial fur of Bluey and Crazee as they brush past me with their out-sized heads and weird hoof-hands; I will not become engrossed in conversation nor share see-sawing emotions with Mick, ever-present Phil who never misses a game, the old dears, Ray and his grandson Harrison, or Pat from Clacton with her bag of sweets and lucky charm, the masturbating monkey.

Not thinking of what I am missing, I enjoy a light lunch of home-made spicy carrot soup with my wife Paulene whilst resisting the temptation of a beer, despite a choice of Adnams Ghostship, Adnams Ease Up IPA, Fuller’s Bengal Lancer, Chimay, Chimay Brun, Orval, Westmalle and Faro Foudroyante from my ‘beer cupboard’. We watch the Tour de France on the television, losing ourselves in the French countryside as an escape from the memory of lockdown. We talk and reminisce about holidays and trips to France. It’s a quarter past three. Flippin’ eck! The game has started and I hadn’t realised, this is what life is like without the discipline of the railway timetable to get me to the match. I leave Paulene somewhere in the Haute Garonne and find my radio, which is already tuned to BBC Radio Suffolk, because I like a laugh. I decided long ago that watching Town on the ifollow is not worth £10, particularly when I’ve already spent over £300 on a season ticket, so I settle down in an Ikea Poang chair in the back bedroom with Brenner Woolley and Mick Mills. Elvis Costello was right ” Radio is a sound salvation”.

Very quickly I learn that Aaron Drinan is pronounced Dry-nen and doesn’t rhyme with ‘linen’ as I previously thought it did, which I think is a useful start and then Mick Mills tells me that a half-chance for Bristol Rovers is the first time they have threatened Town’s goal so at least I can now be confident that we’re not losing. Brenner and Mick witter on and Brenner tells me that Tomas Holy “puts his foot through the ball”; I wait for the referee to stop the game to extricate Holy’s foot, but rather confusingly the commentary carries on with Brenner describing the ball as being passed “along the deck “and I now wonder if the game has been moved from Portman Road to an oil tanker; it’s common after all for the size of such ships to be measured in terms of football pitches. I’m still not sure of the up to date score but Brenner is hoping for a result in normal time, which implies the scores are still level and that he’s got better things to do after five o’clock than commentate on this. The absence of any crowd noise then strikes me for the first time and I am conscious of the shouts of the players echoing through the stands left cavernous and empty. Fittingly in all this blankness, Brenner at last reprises the score, it’s still nil-nil; I haven’t missed anything then. Phew.

Mick Mills is not a man to ever sound at all excited, but he feels moved to say that our left hand side has ‘come to life’ and produced two or three ‘moments’. That’s what the game is all about I think to myself and am heartened to hear Mick provide balance by wishing that the right hand side of the team could do the same. Brenner takes back control of the commentary and I learn that today Paul Lambert is wearing a big over coat, which is most unusual; I don’t think I’ve ever seen him not in a black v-neck sweater; perhaps the added security of his five year contract has led him to invest in a more extensive wardrobe, but I do worry that it’s a bit early in the year for an overcoat and surely this can only provoke more abuse from his critics on social media.

As I drift off into reverie about what is an appropriate coat for a football manager on a cool early September Saturday, Brenner announces that “Sears was not going to miss” and Town are 1-0 up. It’s twenty-eight minutes past three, I clench my left fist and softly whisper a sibilant ‘Yes’ to myself. “It was easy to get the ball down the corridor to Sears” says Mick Mills and once again I’m a bit lost trying to imagine where I’d seen any corridors at Portman Road, except beneath the stands, and worrying that if the ball was in a corridor surely it should have been a throw-in. I thank our lucky stars that our level of football is not subject to VAR.

With Town a goal up the game soon sounds like it has become a tad dull, or it could just be the commentary. Mick Mills increasingly seems like a comfortably retired man in his seventies, but the I remember that he is. Brenner meanwhile goes off piste and begins to talk about Town’s next game at home to the Arsenal Under-23 team in the now despicably compromised, credibility-lacking EFL Trophy, expressing his interest in seeing “…how good the latest crop of kids at the Emirates are”. If he’s so interested in bleedin’ Arsenal perhaps he should clear off to BBC London. Hopefully as annoyed as I am by Brenner’s concern about a club that isn’t Ipswich Town, Mick tries to break the mould by injecting a hint of excitement into the commentary and announces “That was a super pass from Dozzell” but he spoils it rather by pausing and then adding “so that was good”, as if his use of the adjective “super” was in retrospect going a bit far.

I look at my watch and find that it’s approaching half time and I think I discern from the commentary that Town have a corner. They do, and now it’s 2-0 courtesy of what Mick Mills dubs a ‘fabulous goal’ from Luke Chambers. “Luke Chambers is pretty deadly in the opposition box” says Mick leaving me to fill in the blanks that he can, on occasions, be quite deadly in his own box too. Half-time arrives and unlike at Portman Road I don’t make an undignified dash to the khasi but stay in my seat. This is no doubt in part due to not having a bladder full of the remnants of two or more pints of beer and partly because at Portman Road I am not pleasantly paralysed through sitting on a comfortable chair. For remaining seated I am rewarded by hearing Mick Mills refer to Aaron Drinan as Aaron Dry-nan although he instantly corrects himself to make Aaron’s surname rhyme with linen a la Brenner Woolley. Mick goes on to tempt fate horribly by saying that he “…cannot see Bristol Rovers coming back in to this”. I admire Mick’s forthrightness, but recent experience nevertheless leads me to offer a small prayer for him, and his opinion, despite my probable atheism. I take a brief trip downstairs to France to bring the gospel to my Christian wife that Town are winning 2-0. She asks if I am sure I have tuned into the right radio station.

The second half begins at the ridiculously late time of 4:06pm, and it’s not long before Mick Mills is telling me that the game has become a “…little but drab, a little bit boring”; if anyone should know about that it’s monotone Mick. Personally, I am finding the experience of sitting in my back bedroom listening to the wireless quite exciting and probably more interesting than if I had had to fork out a tenner or so for a match ticket plus as much again for the train fare, beer and perhaps a pie, all requirements if I was to attend in person. I am further enthralled when Brenner advises me as the ball is booted off the pitch that “…the ball is dipped in some sort of sterilizing solution when it goes in the seats over there”. I can’t help wondering why this is necessary; who normally sits in that part of the ground? What sort of unpleasant residue have they left? Why hasn’t that corner of the ground be cleaned since last March?

Moving on, Mick Mills is providing the most enjoyable moments of the commentary and, as he did in the first half, he gives praise but then tempers it. “That was a wonderful corner by Judge” he says before qualifying his statement by explaining “It was…………good”, once again suggesting that given time to think about it perhaps his initial assessment was a little too enthusiastic. It’s either that or he just doesn’t know that many adjectives. But there is no doubt that lurking beneath Mick’s inherent reticence and quietude there is a passion and he soon lets it out with the statement “There’s a lot of football in the team”. As for Brenner he can’t help but betray a certain cynicism, no doubt borne of over fifteen years commentating on the mighty Blues; “Good play from the Blues” says Brenner, before adding with perfect timing “At the moment”.

The second half is clearly not totally thrilling, but the impression received is thankfully that Town are playing within themselves and have the measure of these “Pirates”. The game plays on and I am guilty of paying more attention to Twitter than to Brenner and Mick as I seek to discover how the likes of Whitton United, Long Melford, Ipswich Wanderers, Stowmarket Town and Framlingham Town are getting on. I admit I haven’t really been paying close attention to the commentary but am nevertheless surprised at four thirty-three to hear Brenner say that Town are now 3-0 up, and although I will admit to reading Twitter I wonder how I could have missed hearing the goal go in. I am left to suppose Mick’s less than excited general delivery and Brenner’s overriding interest in the Arsenal’s “kids” could explain why neither commentator had succeeded in grabbing my attention. Fortunately, Twitter can also tell me that it was Freddie Sears who scored the third goal, in the 68^th minute as well as actually showing me the first two goals and then the third as well.

Time moves on inexorably and it’s now four forty-nine, and Brenner confirms that it’s been “all over really” since Freddie Sears scored Town’s third goal, as he stifles a yawn. Fittingly the commentary peters out a little with periods of silence punctuated with commentator clichés letting the eager listeners know that Bristol Rovers don’t have “enough left in the tank” to change the result and that Town have been “good value” for their lead. “Three-nil, Ipswich Town” says Brenner, saving up his allocation of useful verbs and adjectives for another day, perhaps when Arsenal’s “kids” might be playing. “Town, winding the clock down” says Mick. “According to my watch we’re just about there” are Brenner’s final words, as if prompting the referee to blow his whistle, which miraculously he then does.

Pleased that Town have won and pleased that I can leave Brenner and Mick alone together and return downstairs to my wife, I turn off my radio. I haven’t really had a clue what’s been going on all afternoon but I do know that Town have won a cup tie, scoring three times in the process and not conceding, even if I only noticed two of the goals and it feels as if it all happened in a far off universe, but being divorced from the proceedings the result is all that matters. Back to reality, if not normality; a glass of beer and fish and chips for tea. As Ray Davies of the Kinks told us in Autumn Almanac, “I like my football on a Saturday”.

Consumer City 1 Lockdown Town 0

June 27, 2020June 27, 2020 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Despite the absence of football since early March, Ipswich Town Football Club has not been absent from my e-mail in-box, far from it in fact. Every week, it seems, I receive some electronic advertising missive from Portman Road in addition to the usual boring, banal weekly newsletter. Whilst the club has been slow to contact me about refunding the money I paid for that portion of the season that never has and never will happen, Bluey, Crazee and their chums are clearly chomping at the bit to try and sell me some football club related merchandise, or ‘merch’ as the hip people call it.

We live in a world of conspicuous consumption, and gift shops wherever they are, be it the Taj Mahal, le palais de Versailles or Ipswich Museum are a magnet to many. I know at least one person who I am told enjoys the ‘exit through gift shop’ element of his visits to art galleries, museums and historic monuments as much if not more than the visit to the attraction itself. I can honestly say my own life would not be as fulfilled and culturally enriched without my jigsaw of Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading The People, bought at the Louvre in Paris or my postcard of George Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières purchased at the Tate Gallery in London. In the same way, football club shops are one of the secret joys of going to football, I have never been able to resist seeking out the messy, sparsely stocked retail outlet round the back of the main stand when on an away trip; if you’re lucky it’ll be a ‘portakabin’, if not so lucky a megastore. In his utterly brilliant book ‘Saturday 3pm, 50 eternal delights of modern football’, Daniel Gray refers to club shops as “…old curiosity shops, eccentric and other worldly.” He goes on to say “Let us salute the club-crested pencil case”. For such reasons a variety of F.C. fridge magnets decorate a metal board in my study, club pennants dangle over one’s head when sat in my upstairs toilet and my wife has a cupboard full of beanie bears and miniature mascots in replica kit. It’s not that club shops tempt me with fabulous objects of desire so much as they amaze and amuse me by peddling what I can only describe as ridiculous crap.

Having not been able to browse through the assorted collection of polyester training wear, replica kit, pointless souvenirs and dubious fashion in person since ‘lockdown’, I eventually came to welcome the ceaseless trickle of Ipswich Town e-mails urging me to buy, buy, buy and the easy access it promised to the club shop website. “On-line shopping; you know you want to” the e-mail didn’t say enticingly in the voice of Nigella Lawson, but it might as well have. Further cajoled and teased by the ‘something for nothing’ bait of free postage I let my right index finger open the e-mail with a single, fateful click of the mouse.

For all Ipswich Town’s apparent inability to connect with its fan base, Marcus Evans knows his market and he knows by now that a lot of people in Suffolk are nothing if not a bit stingy and so it’s sale goods that are being pushed here, the real garbage that nobody at all wanted. Here is where you can pay homage to the consumer-society on the cheap, filling up on the season before last’s home kit, the much sought after ‘relegation special’. Only my intense dislike of tacky, itchy, nasty polyester stops me reaching for the credit card. Perhaps I will be more tempted by the ‘ITFC Stamp Tee’, a shirt reduced from £16 to a tenner; or perhaps not, having seen the bizarre blob of white on the chest in the form of a postmark. Why a postmark? What are we, a team of chuffin’ posties?

On the same page as the ‘Stamp Tee’ the Paul Lambert poster is reduced from a fiver to £ 2.50, a fair summation of the fall in the level of his stock in the eyes of many Town fans after an eleventh place finish in the Third Division. Most damning though is the 90% discount on postcards of James Norwood and Kaydon Jackson which are reduced from a modest, yet still vastly over-priced £1 to a somewhat insulting 10 pence. It’s a scale of reduction so impressive that that it is used to headline the e-mail but without telling you that it only applies to two poxy postcards that no one wants anyway, hence their appearance in the sale. If these two players’ agents had succeeded in negotiating image rights in their contracts, then this is Marcus Evans’s revenge. It did however set me wondering who buys a postcard of Kaydon Jackson. A visitor to Ipswich wanting to relay its glory to a friend or relative ‘back home’ would surely pick one of our splendid Victorian town hall or may be the remarkably pargetted Ancient House, or perhaps the Grade I Listed Unitarian Chapel, glassy, curvy Willis building or even the soaring Orwell Bridge. The only sort of friend who could possibly send you a postcard of Kaydon Jackson or James Norwood would surely be an art student trying to impress by being so ‘post-modern’.

Nothing much was grabbing my attention as something I would want to buy; Cuddly T-Rex? No; Retro colouring book? No; Piggy bank? No. I thought of who I knew who might have a birthday soon that I could palm off cheap sale goods on. The cheapest of the cheap, the least wanted of the unwanted were presumably the items marked ‘clearance’. But I couldn’t think of a friend for whom a giant Bluey the mascot badge (£3.99 down to £.200) or ITFC bunting (£3.99 down to £3.00) would define our friendship. An ITFC birthday card was out of the question being un-reduced at £3.50. One ITFC birthday card incidentally features a picture of a battered looking trophy cup engraved with the words ‘Happy Birthday’. I can only think that as Ipswich are one of just three clubs out of the one hundred and fifteen in steps one to five of the English football league pyramid not to have won a trophy or been promoted in the past 20 years (the other two are Oldham Athletic and Everton), this ‘Happy Birthday’ trophy card was inspired by a desire to show younger Town supporters what a cup even looked like.

Eventually, the seemingly limitless cornucopia of blue and white Ipswich Town branded goods before me was too much and I gave in to the pressure of consumerism, as we all do. Rationalising my decision by agreeing with myself to dispose of two grotty looking but much loved un-branded T-shirts that are probably 20 years old, I bought something described as a Button Neck Tee for £10, reduced from £16. After receiving the shirt in the post a little over a week after ordering it I went back to the website to post a review of my purchase, which under the heading of ‘Cheap’ & Cheerful went something like this: I bought this garment in the sale, reduced from £16 to £10. It arrived after just over a week. I was a little disappointed with the quality and was glad I hadn’t paid full price. The material is very thin and the finish around the collar quite poor, with an unsightly lumpy seam where the collar meets the neck. Otherwise however, I like the design and the colour, it’s a good fit and the club badge is nicely embroidered. It’ll do for hanging about in at home but I wouldn’t wear it out. Naturally enough, and not unreasonably, the club reserves the right to moderate the reviews it receives, but despite my review not including any rude words or grammatical errors it has not appeared on the website. I submitted a similar review again a week or two later and that has never appeared either. I have now posted the review for a third time and am waiting to see if Ipswich Town publish it. Very little of the merchandise on the Ipswich Town website seems to have been reviewed; apart from Ipswich Town supporters being an apathetic lot, which is true, it seems there could be another reason.

With ‘lockdown’ now being loosened, Ipswich Town are withdrawing the offer of free postage and the club shop will re-open its doors on Friday 3^rd July. I am going to miss those e-mails from Planet Blue tempting me to buy club branded doormats, duvets, rubber ducks and shoe laces, but I will keep trying to post my review of the cheap and cheerful ‘Button Neck Tee’ until the shirts are all sold and they disappear from the website altogether. With no football still to go to I need something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

Ipswich Town 0 Coventry City 1

March 9, 2020August 1, 2025 / martinpbrooks / Leave a comment

Last night I went to a ‘gig’ in a very small music venue in Chelmsford called the Hot Box. My friend Pete, who has never really got over being eighteen, invited me to see a ‘Psyche Rock’ band from Glasgow called Helicon, he thought I’d like them because some of their songs feature a sitar and I’m a sucker for a sitar, so he thought right. It was when sitting in the bar chatting and listening to the trains rumble overhead (Hot Box is inside two railway viaduct arches) that we couldn’t help but notice all the reproductions of classic album covers of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s that plaster the walls, and Pete spotted that for the Only Ones’ eponymous album released in 1978, my favourite year. Today I have realised how the lyrics to the Only Ones’ Another Girl, Another Planet describe my relationship with Ipswich Town “You get under my skin, I don’t find it irritating”.

Today the sky is blue with a hint of wispy cloud. I stepped out of my back door a bit earlier and it felt flippin’ freezing; so, it is cloaked in a thick woolly jumper, overcoat and muffler that I set off for the railway station having flagrantly ignored the threat of COVID-19 and kissed my wife goodbye. The train arrives on time and the twelve minute walk has left me hot and a bit sweaty; life is not always what you expect. Naturally, the sun is shining in Ipswich and behind the Station Hotel in its beer garden the scarves and shirts of Coventry City fans mimic the colour of the sky; surreally the Eton Boating Song drifts up over the pub car park and the murky waters of the River Orwell, I half expect to see Boris Johnson and his cronies burning £50 notes in front of the rough sleepers who doss down at the front of the railway station.

In Portman Road the six-wheel, slate grey Coventry City team bus arrives at the same time as me, but the bus reverses into Portman Road, turns round and is re-directed to the Constantine Road entrance. Unlike the coach driver I know exactly where I’m going and walk on through, past a man who appears to have a metal bollard stuck up his anus, and the usual pre-match panorama of people munching low-grade meat product between slabs of low grade bread product. The flags on the Cobbold Stand fly strongly in the breeze and I walk on towards St Matthews Street and St Jude’s Tavern where Mick is already a good way through a pint of Iceni Brewery Partridge Walk (£2.50). I buy a pint of the same and once sat down we discuss the end of my phased return to work after illness, our weight , today’s team selection and, after Mick reveals how he can’t stand people going on and on about their dogs, dogs. Neither of us owns a dog but I used to have two Lurchers called Alfie and Larry, until they were put down. I drink another pint of Partridge Walk whilst Mick sinks a Jamieson’s whisky and with fifteen minutes or so until kick-off we depart with the licensee wishing us luck as we don our coats.

Turnstile 5 is my portal into another world today and as usual I smile and thank the operator for letting me through. With bladders drained and hands washed Mick and I take our seats, stepping over them from the row behind so as not to inconvenience Pat from Clacton who is already ensconced at the end of the row. Of course ever-present Phil who never misses a game is here too, along with his young son Elwood and there’s a welcome return of the old dears (Doug and Sheila) who used to sit behind me but now sit in front of me; the only absentee is once again the man with the Brylcreemed hair; that’s two games on the trot he’s not been here, I fear we may have ‘lost’ him and Pat from Clacton says as much. I won’t miss him, I found his thick hair furrowed with Brylcreem somewhat distracting.

The two teams soon emerge from the shiny, blue, plastic tunnel and Crazee the mascot waves his flag like Liberty leading the people in Eugene Delacroix’s painting. “L’étendard sanglant est levé” I sing to myself, in my head, whilst wishing this game was in Ligue 1 and not League One. The sky is no longer blue, but grey and cloudy. The game begins and Ipswich are wearing their customary lovely royal blue shirts and socks with white shorts whilst our guests Coventry are in a somewhat avant garde ensemble of white shirts with a black and white chequered band across the chest, black shorts and white socks; they look as though they are either the 2-Tone Records works’ team or the Metropolitan Police, but it’s quite smart in a un-football-kit-like sort of way. The 2-Tone connection is in fact used to market the kit and in my mind I take things a step further imagining the players on the team bus all in dark suits, pencil ties and pork-pie hats before stepping off the bus in a line like Madness or skanking to The Selecta. If Ipswich Town was to go for a dress style based on that of a famous, local, popular music artist the players would have to have haircuts like a 1980’s Nik Kershaw, and indeed Frank Yallop did.

Five minutes pass and Town’s Jon Nolan falls theatrically in the penalty area, it’s a blatant dive and I express my disgust with outspread arms and disbelieving expression whilst those around me bay for a penalty. Town looked okay for a short while, but Coventry are now dominating possession and seem like they have a plan. Up in the Cobbold Stand the Coventry supporters sing Tom Hark (originally a Ska song by Elias and his Zig-Zag Ji-flutes, but not on 2-Tone) and something about ‘going up’, which my ears won’t let me decipher. The away following today is impressive, even if their annunciation is poor; we will later learn that there are 1,740 of them and in forty-nine years of coming to Portman Road I have never seen so many Coventry City supporters, but then this is the first time in forty-nine years that a Coventry team has come to Portman Road that is at the top of or even anywhere near the top of a league. These people have been very patient, their team having previously only ever been models of mediocrity, although most Town fans would kill for a bit of mediocrity right now.

As seagulls soar overhead and perch on the cross girder of the Sir Bobby Robson Stand roof, Coventry win the game’s first corner, but the ball is sent directly behind the goal line. The match looks like being one of attrition, but then Coventry score; the uninspiringly named Matt Godden turning very cleverly and shooting inside the far post. No one saw that coming, least of all Luke Chambers and his chums in the Ipswich back-four. Fifteen minutes have passed. “Super, Super Matt” sing the Coventry fans as if advertising a local launderette, but then clarifying the matter by adding “Super Matty Godden”, all to the tune of Skip to My Lou.

The Sir Bobby Robson stand, who had been in reasonable voice fall quiet and the pall of gloom that had seemingly been blown out to sea after the defeat to Fleetwood on Tuesday returns. “Fucking dog shit this” opines the roughly spoken gentleman behind me. “Fuckin’ sums it all up” he continues, as a Town player is out-jumped for the ball, “How was he beaten in the air? He’s not even trying to win the fuckin’ ball”. Pat from Clacton rolls her eyes at the coarseness of the language whilst owning up to me that she sometimes says “shit”.

On 28 minutes a ball drops over the top of the Coventry defence and Town’s Jon Nolan is on to it with just Coventry’s Slovakian goalkeeper Marko Marosi between him and glory. Nolan opts for abuse as he tamely heads the ball into the goalkeeper’s hands. “We’re gonna win the League” sing the Coventry supporters, sounding a little unsure of the words, having never sung them before this season. Half an hour has passed and the wonderfully named referee, Trevor Kettle, whistles for a foul on Town’s Teddy Bishop and then gives his yellow card its first airing of the afternoon, brandishing it in the direction of the perpetrator Liam Walsh. Town win their first corner five minutes later and Luke Woolfenden’s shot is sent wide of the goal. It’s nearly half-time and seizing their opportunity to deliver ironic humour as Town supporters head for the toilets, the Coventry fans sing “Is this a library?” Time enough remains for Nolan to be through on goal again and send his shot over the cross bar and a few rows behind me some unusually posh sounding people talk to one another very loudly ,as posh people often do, about something completely unrelated to football.

Half -time brings boos for Trevor ‘The Whistle’ Kettle as he leaves the pitch with his two side-kicks in their unpleasant yellowy-green tops and the air is one of despondency. Mick asks if I thought we should have had a penalty near the beginning when Nolan went down; I tell him I can’t remember the incident. “Well, you were very animated at the time” says Mick, and then I remember and have to explain that actually I was annoyed that Nolan had dived. I speak with Ray who bemoans the absence of decent full-backs at the club and the fact that once again the goal Town conceded came down the left hand side of the pitch.

At 16:04 the second half begins, but the blokes behind don’t return for a good few minutes; they don’t miss much and we don’t miss them. As time passes inexorably it becomes apparent that the second half is better than the first from a Town supporting perspective, we have more of the ball anyway, which makes it feel like we’re doing okay. Godden misses a good opportunity to confirm the win for Coventry, but otherwise his team doesn’t look that much better than ours, just a bit more confident due to a fortunate habit of winning rather than an unfortunate one of losing. Pat from Clacton tells me that she’s going to Yarmouth next weekend for a week of playing whist, but she’ll be back on the Friday, the day before the Portsmouth game. She won £28 last year.

An hour of football has passed and as he turns towards goal Town’s Freddie Sears is hacked down by Coventry’s Kyle Macfadzean who is consequently booked by Mr Kettle, who I imagine must have asked “Would you spell that please” as he reached for his pencil and his notebook. With the help of her compact Sony camera and its zoom lens Pat confirms that Ed Sheeran is here again today and she snaps him. I tell her that I saw on Twitter that Rick Wakeman is here too, and she gets a really good picture of him in the directors’ box, in which he’s looking right down the camera. Watch out for the Patarazzi. Pat’s sister Jill wins the guess the crowd competition on the Clacton supporters’ bus. “Oh please let them score” entreats Pat as another cross is sent into the Coventry penalty area, but the team is in need of some luck and Pat gets out the masturbating monkey charm who introduced himself at the Fleetwood game; she rubs his head but nothing happens. I learn that the monkey actually came from Cambodia, not Vietnam as I said before.

Neither Mick nor Pat from Clacton, nor I notice how many minutes of added time there are, so engrossed are we in the match and so strongly are we willing Town to score, but at 16:53 Mr Kettle whistles for the last time and it’s all over bar the booing, of which, thankfully, there isn’t as much as there was on Tuesday. Pat from Clacton and ever-present Phil and who never misses a game and Elwood make a sharp exit for their respective coach and car but Mick and I stay to applaud the team. They haven’t all played well, but we don’t doubt that they tried to, who doesn’t want to do their best except nihilists and even they probably want to be good at being nihilists. If we don’t applaud them that can only make them feel worse; we’re Supporters, it’s what we do. Something tells me the masturbating monkey would say it’s just fate.